China’s aggressive cyber espionage and military reconnaissance
operations against both U.S. government and private networks show no
sign of abating under the Obama administration’s policy of holding talks
and threatening but not taking punitive action.
Typical of the administration’s approach has been the seemingly endless series of high-level meetings with Chinese officials, such as talks held last week in Washington to discuss “norms” of behavior in cyberspace.
For at least the past five years, President Obama and the White House have ignored appeals from security and military officials, as well as from Congress and the private sector, to show greater resolve and take some type of action against the Chinese, lest the country’s technology wealth be drained empty.
The meeting on May 11 included officials of the Senior Experts Group on International Norms and Related Issues. Christopher Painter, State Department coordinator for cyber issues, led the U.S. side, and the Chinese delegation was headed by Wang Qun, director of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s department of arms control.
China’s appointment of an arms control official to lead their delegation shows clearly Beijing’s approach to the discussions: The Chinese, as with other communist regimes, view arms control as political warfare and a means of limiting your enemies capabilities while pretending to agree to limits on your own capabilities. The Soviets perfected this tactic in the Cold War.
The cyber meeting, as with most sessions involving China, is being kept secret. Only a brief, two-paragraph statement on the session was released by the State Department.
For the diplomats at State, substantive outcomes from talks like these matter little. The process of holding discussions is considered to be progress.
The administration has been talking to China for years with little result. In fact, an earlier round of talks were cut off by the Chinese in 2014 after the Justice Department indicted five People’s Liberation Army hackers for stealing corporate data from Westinghouse, Alcoa, and other entities. China demanded the indictment be dropped, even though an actual prosecution remains extremely unlikely.
Typical of the administration’s approach has been the seemingly endless series of high-level meetings with Chinese officials, such as talks held last week in Washington to discuss “norms” of behavior in cyberspace.
For at least the past five years, President Obama and the White House have ignored appeals from security and military officials, as well as from Congress and the private sector, to show greater resolve and take some type of action against the Chinese, lest the country’s technology wealth be drained empty.
The meeting on May 11 included officials of the Senior Experts Group on International Norms and Related Issues. Christopher Painter, State Department coordinator for cyber issues, led the U.S. side, and the Chinese delegation was headed by Wang Qun, director of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s department of arms control.
China’s appointment of an arms control official to lead their delegation shows clearly Beijing’s approach to the discussions: The Chinese, as with other communist regimes, view arms control as political warfare and a means of limiting your enemies capabilities while pretending to agree to limits on your own capabilities. The Soviets perfected this tactic in the Cold War.
The cyber meeting, as with most sessions involving China, is being kept secret. Only a brief, two-paragraph statement on the session was released by the State Department.
For the diplomats at State, substantive outcomes from talks like these matter little. The process of holding discussions is considered to be progress.
The administration has been talking to China for years with little result. In fact, an earlier round of talks were cut off by the Chinese in 2014 after the Justice Department indicted five People’s Liberation Army hackers for stealing corporate data from Westinghouse, Alcoa, and other entities. China demanded the indictment be dropped, even though an actual prosecution remains extremely unlikely.
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